Posted on 04/11/2005 5:33:49 AM PDT by OESY
If the Democratic chieftains in Washington really want a window into why heartland residents are tuning out our party, they should stop huddling with loopy linguists from Berkeley like George Lakoff and just start reading Frank Rich's commentaries in the New York Times. There they will find a perfect distillation of the arrogance and narrow-mindedness that typifies the cultural thinking of our elites -- and turns off red-state voters. In the view of Mr. Rich and his acolytes, freedom in our culture has been "under attack" ever since 9/11. Indeed, Mr. Rich has argued that this attack is being led by "new Puritans"....
Once you get past the absurdity of Mr. Rich's hyperbole -- vulgarity, joyous or otherwise, is hardly in retreat -- the implications of this mindset and the battle lines it establishes are clear....
I find the attitude of Democratic elites obnoxious, as well as intellectually flimsy. It is more than possible... to set some voluntary boundaries for protecting children without sacrificing the ability of adults to consume adult-oriented material.
One can only imagine how insulting our elitism is to the average mother in the exurbs....
But that is not a discussion the entertainment industry or its Democratic defenders want to have.... Their first move usually is to deny that the culture has any influence on attitudes and behavior. When that ludicrous proposition gets dismissed, the free-speech shields are instantly raised....
But it also flows from a profound aversion to making moral judgments. And that's the nub of the values problem for Democrats today. We don't hesitate to judge people's beliefs, but we blanch at judging their behavior. That leaves us silent on big moral issues at a time of great moral uncertainty, and leaves the impression that we are the party of "anything goes."...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yes, I have said that if that were the case, then all these fundraisers and rally's in Hollywood to "make a difference" would stop.
I call this the ultimate paradox of liberalism: Relentlessly striving to place all power in the hands of Big Brother, then, after BB has usurped individual freedoms (as he surely will) the same liberals will scream the loudest in protest.
Ary you sure his last nane isn't spelled with a J?
Your secretary sounds exactly like my Mom and Grandmother. If it was Hitler himself, but had a -D behind his name on the ballot, they'd vote for him. It's people like them that keep the RATS alive when they should have gone the way of the Whig party a decade ago. No amount of reasoning, common sense, or in your face proof will keep them from voting for a Bill Clinton, Algore, or Ketchup Boy.
My great uncle passed away in 2000. My grandparents not only had to pay for the funeral, but got socked by the IRS for $26,000. They freaked. My mom freaked. I told them Dubya wanted to get rid of the Death Tax. So, they all voted for Algore anyway. I had to stay away from family gatherings during the Battle of Florida I was so disgusted with them.
In 2003, one of the most intelligent politicians I've ever seen, who knows more about the in's and out's of healthcare, Bobby Jindal, ran against the brain-dead Kathleen Blanco for Governor here in Louisiana. My grandmother absolutely loved Jindal, because she's getting way up there in years. Until she found out he was a Republican.
I've met Blanco and know there's not a bit of intelligence in that arrogant brain of hers. Imagine a female Ted Kennedy, and you'll get Kathleen Blanco. So naturally, she and mom(gramps had passed) voted for Blanco, who ran one of the nastiest race-baiting campaigns I've ever seen.
Now, we have higher taxes, less services, and a governor who immediately brought all of Edwin Edwards old cronies back with her. Eddy may be in the pen, but his buddies are still just as corrupt as they've always been.
Read the article. An amazing ride. Starts off boosting civil values, winds glorifying Hillary Clinton. Excuse me while I staunch this nose bleed.
This site is invaluable. It was designed to allow you access without getting tons of spam.
www.bugmenot.com
Thanks.
I tried that and could not find info for online.wsj.com or wsj.com
If I had found anything I would have posted it here.
Some conservatives have a similar problem. Take, for example, someone in the South or the Plains and Mountain states who holds a technical or finance-related job, or is an independent businessman or farmer. Three are few liberals in his workplace and they tend to not be vocal. His social life is centered in a conservative evangelical church, where those who hold liberal political views keep silent on politics. (I attend such a church in suburban Dallas, where there were zero Kerry bumper stickers in last year's elections, but at least every fourth vehicle had a Bush bumper sticker or window decal.) He gets all of his national and world news from conservative talk radio and Internet sites such as FR, NewsMax, and Drudge. His wife homeschools his kids, or they attend Christian private schools.
In spite of not achieving most of the conservative political agenda, there is now a far larger infrastructure of conservative institutions than was the case 15 or certainly 30 years ago. In 1990, anyone with a political interest, conservative or not, probably relied on the MSM because conservative talk radio and Internet had not yet developed. The evangelical churches still had "yellow dog" Democrats from the G.I. Generation who remembered Franklin Roosevelt and remembered their grandfathers' denunciation of the Radical Republicans of the Reconstruction era. Homeschooling was virtually unknown in 1990. Prior to 1975, very few Baptist or charismatic/pentecostal churches had private schools.
Unless this person makes an effort to find out what liberals are currently thinking, he will be entirely clueless or he will be relying on either stereotypes or faded memories from before 1990. This is the reverse of the situation you may experience in the Philadelphia suburbs, but it nonetheless exists.
Well said. I have always lived in areas dominated by liberals, so I am used to it. I can see how stifling it is to be surrounded only by those who think as you do. Actually kind of scary, too.
Nonsense. If someone such a place wants to know what liberals think all they have to do is turn on the MSM. CBS, CNN, any of the big ones. That and most of that comes out in movies and TV since most of the people that work in those areas are big city libs.
Stifling to be around people that think like you do? That makes no sense to me at all. I get stifled living around people who I can't carry on a rational political discussion with since all they do is spout back what they heard on the evening news or worse, fake news like the dailyshow. Yeah, I guess you can get use to anything but I don't see how you think the alternative is scary
Right after you give up something you paid for. How about your username and password on your bank account?
Of course they can turn on the liberal media, but many do not bother, any more than, say, Orthodox Jews would buy pork, despite its ubiquity.
As in Jchomsky?
But it also flows from a profound aversion to making moral judgments.
What planet is this person on? The purveyors of PC averse to moral judgments? What looks like anarchy isn't anarchy at all, but a carefully honed and guided weapon, aimed at the enemies of the liberal establishment. The left supports anything that is culturally corrosive of the old order.
I just like to be around all types of folks. I don't care if they don't agree with me, I think the discussion is enjoyable. I think sitting around with people who all think like I do is not as stimulating.
the reality is that it is those who cry "Censorship!" the loudest who are the ones trying to stifle speech and force their moral world-view on others. That may seem counterintuitive, but think about it. What is at issue is not the right to express oneself politically or artistically, or to consume controversial works in one's own home. It's the cultural environment we all share, what gets said and done in the public square for all to hear and see, and whether that common space should be governed by some social (not legal) norms and standards.Gerstein then says,
How could that not be an appropriate subject for public debate in a democracy, particularly one as committed to free speech as ours?I would like to add to this article. There is one case I know of where the public debate has ended but a major national organization refuses to follow the law, neither the Children's Internet Protection Act [CIPA] nor the US Supreme Court case of US v. American Library Association [ALA] that found CIPA to be constitutional.
Despite the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which permits the government to require libraries that receive certain kinds of federal funding to install filters, ALA policy is unchanged: ALA does not recommend the use in libraries of filtering technology that blocks constitutionally protected information. .... Fact: The association does not endorse the use of filtering technology in public institutions, such as libraries, because it blocks legal information to which users are entitled under the Constitution.http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/factsheets/librariesinternet.htm
Not all parents who are concerned about the avalanche of crud crushing their children every day are obsessed with SpongeBob's sexual orientation. Nor are they seeking to shred the First Amendment. Most are just looking for a little cooperation from the captains of culture to make the hard job of raising children in a fully-wired universe a little easier.Well is asking the American Library Association for a little cooperation in complying with the law of the land so more children are not raped and molested too much to ask?
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